He Loved Her
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Caryl AU. Discussion of Beth, non-romantic (I'd never write romantic Bethyl). In the aftermath of everything that had happened, Carol knew that he had to deal with his feelings. She knew that he had to work them out before they ate him up. Fear, anger, sadness. They were all emotions they were both dealing with. But so was love. Love for their families, and for each other.


**AN: So I've gotten a lot of messages about writing Beth and Daryl together. Without going too much into all my many feelings on this, what I can say is that I in no way saw the two of them as romantically inclined. I would, in no way, support such a pairing. I did, however, think that Daryl cared for Beth because of what she represented to him. For anyone who has the urge to PM me or ask me in reviews or anything else to write Beth and Daryl as a romantic couple, please know that I haven't and I never will. You can stop requesting that.**

 **For some time I've wanted to write a little something about Daryl's feelings about her, and I finally did. This is my interpretation of his feelings and my own version of him working them out with Carol. I've taken liberties with the setting and timeline of the story, but it's set at the barn after the storm.**

 **I own nothing from the Walking Dead.**

 **I hope that you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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When Carol woke, sunlight was streaming in through cracks in the barn. It was amazing, she thought, that the barn was standing at all. As she moved, every muscle in her body ached. Of course, all things considered, she had a good number of reasons to feel like her body had been mistreated. The night before was recorded in her mind like little more than a vivid nightmare. Around her, people slept where they'd fallen, many in positions that would make them sore when they woke. For just a moment, everything looked so peaceful that Carol almost doubted her own memory. Maybe she'd only dreamed the storm. Maybe nothing had happened at all.

Carol shuffled around and got to her feet. She seemed to be the only one awake. Everyone else was still sleeping. For a moment, she wondered if she should wake them. She wondered if she should tell them that they needed to get—there were things that needed to be done and they needed to get a move on. At the very least, they needed to find food and water. They'd been running too low for too long and it was going to catch up with them.

But then, maybe that was the point. It was going to catch up with them. All of them. It would catch up with her too, eventually. Rushing out to find water and food, at the moment, wasn't going to save them. Maybe they needed the rest as much as they needed anything else.

Carol made her way over to where Rick was sleeping with Judith. Both he and the little girl, curled up against his chest, were lost to the world. She circled around and observed her other travelling companions. These people were her friends. They were her family. She'd live for them and she'd die for them, but still she'd always feel like something of an outsider.

The sentiment was even stronger now than it ever had been before.

Carol made her way to the barn door and examined it. It was there, somewhat laid in place, and only a few of its hinges remained intact. There was evidence of the night before, but it wasn't what she'd expected. The very fact that the roof was still on the building, and there was nothing raining through it, was more than Carol was expecting. She pulled open the barn door as quietly as she could, struggling for a moment with her crying muscles and the weight of the half-hinged door, and then she stepped out.

Outside, the landscape around her was covered with twisted trees and torn apart Walkers. Something of a mini-tornado had hit the area. It had twisted up trees, it had sucked up Walkers and dropped them—ripped and shredded—in new locations, but somehow it had miraculously missed the barns. If Carol still believed in miracles, that's what she would have called this. She'd given up, some time ago, believing in them though. She just saw this as a streak of good luck for them all. Goodness knows, they needed it.

Carol took out her knife and walked around for a moment. None of the Walkers in the area were going to get up. They were impaled, trapped, or too void of their bodies to move. Still, she put most of them down with the knife and then she went and selected a spot to sit on one of the downed trees. She wouldn't be bothered here. Not by Walkers. The smell was too strong for them.

Carol sat in silence, simply taking in the morning, and thought—about everything and nothing all at once. She turned her head at the crack of a stick and saw Daryl as he approached, the weight of the world visible on his shoulders. Carol didn't say anything. She simply turned back to contemplate the grim view in front of her. Daryl had come to find her, as he always did, and he had found her. Soon, he would make his way over to her. There was no need to rush him and there was no need to be too anxious about it. He did things at his own pace, much like Carol.

When Daryl finally made his way to her, he sat on the fallen tree next to her.

"What are you looking at?" He asked, leaning forward slightly like he was trying to distinguish some specific spot that she might be examining.

"Nothing," Carol said. She shook her head. "There's nothing to look at."

Daryl hummed. It was confirmation that he'd heard her, and maybe that he agreed with her, but he had little else to offer on the topic.

He sat, silently, beside her for a little while. Then he lifted himself up and burrowed in his pocket. He came out with a familiar object and he turned it over in his palm. Carol had been carrying the bag at the hospital—the few belongings she had the few belongings that Beth had—and she'd kept anything that seemed significant to her. The knife, the one that Beth had carried for a long time and that Carol knew that Daryl had found specifically for her, she'd returned to him. It was that knife that he was looking at now.

Carol watched him a moment, looking at the object, and then she turned her eyes back to the nothing that had been entertaining them.

"I meant what I said," she said. "You've got to feel it sometime."

Daryl hummed.

"Just like you do?" He asked, some bitterness to his voice.

Carol shook her head, even though she wasn't sure if he was looking at her or not.

"I can't feel it," she said. "I can't—let myself. But you? That's what you do. You've got to feel it. You loved her."

"She was dumb," Daryl said, scuffing his boots in the dirt. "Dumb and—she shoulda known better than to pull some stunt like that."

Carol laughed to herself.

"She was a teenager. She was—impulsive. She thought it would help. She thought—she could save the world," Carol offered.

"She was dumb and she got herself killed," Daryl said.

"And you loved her," Carol said. "You loved what she stood for. You loved—that she was a teenager and she was impulsive, and she thought that she could save the world."

Daryl sucked his teeth.

"I tried to teach her how to take care of herself," Daryl said. "Couldn't get her to understand that—if it was just us? One day it was gonna just be her. It was supposed to just be her."

Carol swallowed and nodded her head.

"Because you would go on forever—until you died—and she'd just keep going on...without you...just the way you'd taught her to do," Carol offered.

Daryl hummed again. The sounds he offered, Carol knew, were his way of saying that he wasn't absent from the conversation, but he wasn't comfortable enough with it to really know how to contribute. Or, maybe, he just wasn't sure what he wanted to contribute. Carol had learned to take as much out of his silence as she had from his words.

"It's not an entirely unique feeling," Carol said. She finally glanced at him. There was pain on his face. He did feel it. He might not want to but, just like her, he wasn't able to shut it down as much as he told himself he could. The pain got pushed back, but it was still there. It festered somewhere. "It's not," Carol said. "It's—being a grown up? Being a..." She stopped and swallowed. His hurt, at the moment, was too close to some of her own. Still, she had to help him get through his hurt, even if it stirred up her own emotions. "Being a parent..." she offered quietly.

Daryl scoffed. Of course he would. Carol knew that he would before she even formed the words.

"I weren't her old man," Daryl said.

"No," Carol said, "you weren't. But you loved her just the same. You wanted to protect her. You wanted to—teach her. And, in exchange, she would be there until you died and then? She'd just go on without you—with everything you gave her and everything you taught her. You could believe that she lived forever. Happily, even."

Daryl didn't respond for a moment—a long one—and Daryl didn't push him to say anything. He did things in his own time, and this wouldn't be any different than anything else. Finally, he did start to speak, all the while fooling with the knife.

"She was just there and then she wasn't," Daryl said. "I weren't no damn help at all. I was too busy saving my own ass from the Walkers and then—they were taking her in the car. She was there and then she was gone."

 _She was there and then she was gone. That's how it always seemed to happen. Over and over again. It was the story of life. Or, truth be told, it was the story of death. There until gone._

"You did what you had to do to find her," Carol said. "And you did. You found her. We found her."

"A lot of damn good it did," Daryl said. "Finding her. Just like finding everybody else. Find 'em just to lose 'em again. Like looking all over the place and then finding..."

He broke off.

"Go ahead," Carol said softly. It took a moment for Daryl to decide, though, that she was serious and it was fine for him to say it. "Go ahead," Carol said. "You're not telling me anything that I don't already know. And—you'll feel better to get it out. You've carried it around. You'll feel better to finally say it."

"Like looking everywhere—just hoping she'd be alive—and finding Sophia," Daryl said.

Carol felt her throat ache and she swallowed it back. Like Daryl, she felt it too. She simply kept swallowing it back. She dealt with it when it couldn't be held back any longer, let out just enough not to be entirely consumed by all the emotion inside her, and then she returned to choking it back.

"You did what you could do for Sophia," Carol said. "And—for that? I'll be eternally thankful."

"Didn't really do anything," Daryl said.

"You did more than anyone else," Carol said. "And you did the same for Beth. You looked for her. You refused—you refused to give up on her. But—we can't save everyone."

"You really feel that way?" Daryl asked.

Carol nodded to herself.

"Now, maybe, more than ever," she admitted.

"What happened to you?" Daryl asked. "For real? What really happened out there?"

Carol shook her head.

"You gotta feel it, right?" Daryl asked, trying to prompt her into telling him what had happened with she and Tyreese. Carol simply shook her head again.

"That's for another day," Carol said.

"But you're gonna tell me?" Daryl asked.

"I tell you everything," Carol said. "One day? That'll be no different. For now? You need to—to mourn. But—do it knowing that you did what you could. You did everything that you could. For both of them. And it's OK to feel—hurt. You cared. You had—dreams—of how things would be. And they didn't work out that way. It's OK to feel let down about that too."

Daryl swallowed and hummed again, this time the hum lead into words.

"Let down just don't seem like the right words," he said.

"I understand that too," Carol said, sighing and getting to her feet. "But—if you want poetry? I'm not the one to ask."

She started to walk off with little more intention than to get some air, stretch her sore muscles, and maybe put down some of the squirming Walkers. Daryl caught her hand, though, and stopped her progress. She glanced around and then she looked back at him. She put all the question she could on her face to avoid saying the words that were necessary to ask him to speak his mind.

"Feel like I didn't do enough," Daryl said. "Like—I never have. Every time I had something—anything—I lost it. Can't do anything right. I couldn't bring Sophia back to you. I couldn't do what Hershel would've wanted. I couldn't save Beth."

Carol shook her head at him.

"It's not your burden," Carol said, wishing she could believe her own words for her own situation. Unfortunately it was easier to believe them about Daryl than it was to believe them about herself. "You did the best that you could do. You did everything that you could do. Now you've got to—move on."

Daryl stood up.

"Where are you going?" He asked.

Carol looked around and shrugged.

"Just to kill some Walkers," she said. Daryl nodded and stepped beside her, waiting like he was waiting for her to tell him that they were moving forward, even half a step.

"Going with you," he offered. "Lost you too many times already—you ain't getting away from me again."

Carol stared at him and then she nodded.

"But you always find me," she offered. "No matter what. You always find me. Nine lives, remember?"

"Just the same," Daryl said, following her when she did start to walk again amongst the ruins of the surrounding area.

"Suit yourself," Carol said.

"So you just—don't feel nothing anymore?" Daryl asked. "That's your thing now?"

Carol laughed to herself.

"Or that's what I want to be my _thing_ ," she said.

"That's what I wanted too," Daryl said.

"Does it work?" Carol asked, already knowing that it didn't. Daryl hummed in the negative. He knew as well as she did that trying to will yourself numb did nothing but leave you dealing with your pain inside and in secret.

"Does it work for you?" He asked.

Carol stopped her walking. She stopped stepping over branches and body parts. She turned back and looked at him—only a foot of distance between them.

"I feel—sad," Carol said. "And I feel—hopeless. And hopeful, all at the same time. I feel—hurt and angry and...lonely."

Daryl swallowed, his face showing that he wasn't comfortable. Carol reached out a hand and caught his hand, the one not holding the knife, as though to tell him that he'd run a thousand times before, but she wasn't letting him run right now. He wouldn't let her run, and she wouldn't let him run. Not unless they were running together and toward the same thing.

"What do you feel?" Carol asked, challenging him back. It took him time to answer, but it always took him time.

"All those things," he admitted. "But—when you're here? I don't feel lonely."

Carol felt her throat close slightly. She swallowed against the sensation.

"I feel like..." she said. She stopped, not knowing if it was right. She didn't know if it would come out right. She didn't know how he would take it. She didn't know what he might do. But she'd spent a long time not saying it because she worried about those things. And she'd spent a long time, more than once, regretting never saying it. She had a lot of regrets. This seemed a silly one to have. "I feel like I love you," she offered quietly.

Daryl looked struck for a second, but it was only a flash across his face. It may have even been the realization that he'd heard her correctly that registered there.

"Me too," he said.

Carol smiled to herself. It wasn't the most romantic declaration of love, but it was liable to be the best that she got from Daryl Dixon, at least until he'd had time to think about it and roll it around in her mind. She nodded her head slightly and he chewed at his lip. He made a few awkward movements of his head and Carol realized he wanted to kiss her—but he wasn't sure how to go about it. So she solved the problem for him and met him. Once she brought their lips together, solving the hardest part of the puzzle for him, he took the kiss the rest of the way, and she sunk into him. It was, for just a moment, the best that she'd felt in a long time.

And when she pulled apart from him, her cheeks burned slightly.

"But I still don't want you to go anywhere," Daryl said, after he'd cleared his throat. Carol shook her head gently at him.

"Not alone," she said. He nodded, seeming to take that as the best response he could get.

Wherever they went, they'd go together. And, soon, she'd tell him her burdens and let him carry them with her—just as she carried his. It was more than likely that they'd eventually have more—in a world so full of fast love for those around them and instant loss of here and gone in an instant—but whatever there was? They'd carry it together.


End file.
